For me, the results were far more useful than the various “personality profiles” I have taken , sometimes at considerable cost to my employer.
“The CSF is an online measure of personal talent that identifies areas where an individual’s greatest potential for building strengths exists. … The primary application of the CSF is as an evaluation that initiates a strengths-based development process in work and academic settings. As an omnibus assessment based on positive psychology, its main application has been in the work domain, but it has been used for understanding individuals in a variety of settings — employees, executive teams, students, families, and personal development. … Given that CSF feedback is provided to foster intrapersonal development, comparisons across profiles of individuals are discouraged.”
“When educational psychologist Donald O. Clifton first designed the interviews that subsequently became the basis for the CSF, he began by asking, “What would happen if we studied what is right with people?”Thus emerged a philosophy of using talents as the basis for consistent achievement of excellence (strength). Specifically, the strengths philosophy is the assertion that individuals are able to gain far more when they expend effort to build on their greatest talents than when they spend a comparable amount of effort to remediate their weaknesses (Clifton & Harter, 2003).”
personality tests
Another test set is Gallup / Clifton StrengthsFinder 2.0 (http://www.strengthsfinder.com/113647/Homepage.aspx).
For me, the results were far more useful than the various “personality profiles” I have taken , sometimes at considerable cost to my employer.
“The CSF is an online measure of personal talent that identifies areas where an individual’s greatest potential for building strengths exists. … The primary application of the CSF is as an evaluation that initiates a strengths-based development process in work and academic settings. As an omnibus assessment based on positive psychology, its main application has been in the work domain, but it has been used for understanding individuals in a variety of settings — employees, executive teams, students, families, and personal development. … Given that CSF feedback is provided to foster intrapersonal development, comparisons across profiles of individuals are discouraged.”
“When educational psychologist Donald O. Clifton first designed the interviews that subsequently became the basis for the CSF, he began by asking, “What would happen if we studied what is right with people?”Thus emerged a philosophy of using talents as the basis for consistent achievement of excellence (strength). Specifically, the strengths philosophy is the assertion that individuals are able to gain far more when they expend effort to build on their greatest talents than when they spend a comparable amount of effort to remediate their weaknesses (Clifton & Harter, 2003).”
The above two paragraphs are from Gallup’s research report, available at http://strengths.gallup.com/110389/Research-Behind-StrengthsFinder-20.aspx . (Suggestion: download the file and open it in Adobe Reader. I’ve had trouble reading it inside Firefox.)
There is a small financial cost for the test: buy the book ($13 at Amazon http://www.amazon.com/dp/159562015X/ref=nosim/?tag=thegalluporganiz) to get access to the test and support tools.
My strengths are: Intellection, Analytical, Input, Restorative, Learner